


Issue of My Dear Offense

by Erradianwhocantread



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Awkward Conversations, F/F, Family Dynamics, Gen, Rule 63, Trans Character, fingon is mostly sleeping, gil galad is a baby, new grandchild, supportive conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:29:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erradianwhocantread/pseuds/Erradianwhocantread
Summary: Fingolfin and Maedhros talk after Gil Galad is born about their various family, anxiety, and might-have-beens. A baby does nothing to uncomplicate Finwean family dynamics.





	Issue of My Dear Offense

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Maedhros and Fingon are (cis) rule 63'd. If you don't like rule 63, please read something else that you will enjoy instead.  
> 2) Gil Galad is Maedhros and Fingon's child, created partly using and enchantment, but Fingon was the gestational parent.  
> 3) Fingolfin is portrayed here as a trans man.   
> 4) this is mostly an excuse for me to put my weird headcanons about elf anatomy, culture, reproduction, and gender in a fic. In this universe, the low sexual dimorphism among elves means that all elves are capable of breast feeding, and the spouse who doesn't carry the baby undergoes the hormonal changes naturally during their partner's pregnancy to allow it. They then take primary care of the baby after it's born for the same period of time as it takes to carry a baby (so one year of the sun or one-tenth of a year of the trees), allowing their partner to recover and themselves to bond with their child. Pregnancy and birth have a very taxing effect on their spirits, so the recovery period is entirely necessary. Elf transition can happen at any life point, just like humans, some of them were trans since birth and realize right away, some realize later, and some will describe it as a distinct change later in life from one thing to another. They can effect their bodies with their spirits, so the physical transition happens naturally, but takes some time. Maedhros and Fingon got elf-married in secret in Valinor and Fingolfin (and everyone) found out about it after the rescue. I think that covers all the head canons I'm using here. Enjoy!

The crackling fire threw dancing shadows on the white walls of the small room in Barad Eithel. “See there, my star-child,” said Maedhros to the infant at her breast who had fussily refused to nurse, “so do the maiar of Nessa and Vanna dance in the orchards of Yavanna to call forth the flowers on the trees in the spring, and white blossoms follow where they go.” Ereinion burbled, unimpressed, and resumed trying to eat her hair. Maedhros sighed. “A true prince of the Noldor are you, rejecting outright what other decide is good for you and stubbornly insisting on following what is bright and pleasing though it be to your detriment.” She removed the lock from her child’s mouth and fists under her protests and tried, for the third time since she’d taken her to let Fingon rest, to get her to latch and feed. She had to extend her will to persuade the small but already so delightfully stubborn and so worryingly fitful spirit of her babe that sustenance was indeed necessary for her at this time, but Ereinion finally deigned to nurse. 

There was a soft rap on the door and Fingolfin entered. The High King leaned against the wall and looked with weary and overwhelming fondness at his grandchild. 

“You will forgive me for not rising, majesty,” said Maedhros. 

Fingolfin waved aside her attempt at ceremony and joined her on the couch where she sat. “How fares the newest member of our family?” he asked, stroking the soft baby curls which graced the crown of Ereinion’s head with a finger.

Maedhros grinned. “It is with the utmost disappointment that I must inform you she seems to be taking after your daughter and myself in the worst possible ways.”

“So as true an heir of the house of Finwe as ever there was.”

Maedhros’s answering laugh was cut short as Ereinion, whose attention she had thought wholly occupied, gave her hair a very solid yank. Fingolfin tutted at the baby and replaced the lock of hair with his own finger in the tiny fist. “And how fares Fingon?” asked Maedhros, trying to keep the worry from her voice.

Fingon had been uncharacteristically weary since Ereinion’s birth nine months ago. She slept more than Maedhros had ever known her to, and, though it was usual among the Quendi to be greatly fatigued and need much rest after a birth, the length of Fingon’s convalescence and the slow pace of her progress gnawed at Maedhros’s nerves a little more every day. She had expected that Fingon would be weak for a time after her delivery, but not so weak, and not for so long a time.

Fingolfin sighed. “Much the same, though I do not think you need to fear.” Maedhros started to protest, but he began again before she could. “Some babes take a greater share of energy than others.”

“Forgive me, uncle, but I, nor anyone of  _ my  _ line hardly need your reminder on that.”

“Miriel was a special case.” Oblivious to the conversation, Ereinion decided she was sated and started to emit the disgruntled noises which preceded a great deal of wailing. Her grandfather bundled her into his arms, cooing and dangling his great pendant of gold and sapphire within reach of her eager hands. The offering pleased her, and she grasped it greedily, shoving it into her yet toothless mouth. His grandchild satisfied, he continued. “Her spirit was troubled before the birth of your father, and it was as much her doubts as the drain of his forming which caused her to fade, or so I have been told.”

Maedhros gave a noncommittal grunt as she pulled her deel back over her breast and fastened it. She did not expect an Indion to understand this particular anxiety.

“I was much the same after Turukano’s birth,” said Fingolfin. “Anaire was fretting, his term of single care was coming to a close, and I had barely left my bed or held my son. And unlike you, he had Fingon to look after as well. There was not a little concern as to what would happen if, at the end of my term of rest, I was still not recovered.” A log fell in the hearth, sending a shower of sparks up the flue, and Ereinion murmured happily around the pendant she was gumming. “That was in the days when your father and I were still friends.”

“Yes, that was the summer we stayed in Tirion and Fingon stayed with us.” Curufin had still been teething, and Maedhros ought to have been put out by having another child in their house  _ and  _ being stuck in the city instead of journeying into Araman like they usually did, but her little cousin had been so charmingly earnest in everything that it had been impossible to mind. And it had been most gratifying to see someone with some talent steal Maglor’s lyre.

“Friends is perhaps too strong a word, but the tension between us had not yet become strife,” Fingolfin amended. He pulled the placed a cloth over his shoulder, pulled the pendant firmly from Ereinion’s petulant grasp, and shifted the baby to his shoulder. “We bore each other no ill will, but it was difficult for him to see me, and I him, and so for the most part we didn’t. But then the rumors started going around first that I must have been trying to make a second Feanor, and then, when Turu-- Turgon’s strangeness began to show, that he was defective in some way, and had injured me somehow.”

It occurred to Maedhros that, other than bare and necessary logistics of succession and the happenings in Beleriand while the greater part of their people were crossing the Ice, the two of them had not discussed her father since his death. She began to think she liked it better that way. “The court at Tirion knew of no finer sport than seeing who could invent the vilest rumor and who could spread it fastest,” she said. “How anyone could blame a child…”

“Your father knew well enough the falsehood and the pain of such rumors.” Fingolfin rubbed the baby’s back to keep her from fussing. “He sat with me for as long as the two of us could stand each other as soon as he realized I was failing to recover from the birth as I ought. I never asked him to, and Anaire would have become a monk before sending for him. And yet he came. I thought at first he was perhaps there to gloat.”

“I thought you had said there was no ill will between you yet, uncle.” Maedhros reached out for her daughter, who had not been quieted by Fingolfin’s hand, and Fingolfin gently placed the child in the crook of Maedhros’s good arm. Maedhros placed her false hand, which had her daughter’s current favorite poppet over it, within her reach. Ereinion would not yet sleep anywhere but her arm, and though she should have to be weaned of both that and the breast soon, Maedhros found she was not looking forward to it. 

“No ill will, but an unhealthy amount of sibling rivalry. I’m shocked you don’t remember.” Maedhros could have reminded her uncle that there was much about her father she no longer remembered and why, but the malleable little spirit of her daughter was clinging to her in sleep, and she would not taint her child as she had been tainted. Fingolfin continued, either oblivious or indifferent to Maedhros’s discomfort. “I’d only ever seen him so deeply worried when you fell down the steps of the astronomy tower in your first year and had to be taken to Este. And he’d never worried for me before that I had known of. He sat by my side and took my hand and told me to rest and get well. And then for the remainder of that summer, he supported me with his spirit, lent me his own energy, until I was strong enough to accuse him of only doing it to show off.”

“Is that why you’ve been so tired lately?” asked Maedhros, increasingly motivated to move the topic to anything other than Feanor. “You’ve been doing the same with Fingon?”

Fingolfin nodded. “Though I can’t offer as much as I should like. I suspect I was too sorely tasked on the Ice.”

How her uncle had managed to come up with something she’d prefer to talk about less than her dead father, Maedhros wasn’t sure, and yet he’d managed. “I should be helping her more,” she said.

Shockingly, Fingolfin, who knew nearly the full extent of her debt to Fingon’s goodness, disagreed. “That is not the way of it. You were her support during her pregnancy, and now your spirit is needed to shape your daughter. Your strength is taken up, and by rights and by necessity her care must fall to the rest of us.” Something about the way he put it made Maedhros feel even more selfish and inadequate, more responsible for Fingon’s low state and for whatever terrible outcome might befall her. “She will recover, Maedhros, whatever morbid Therindion fantasies you are weaving from her current weakness. She is not the fading sort.”

Maedhros’s throat tightened and a vicious fury welled up in her too quickly for her to quell it. “Do you think it might have been different between you and my father if you had stayed as you had been born?” 

Fingolfin’s expression didn’t change. This was, of course, a question he had considered many and many a time. “Do you mean, if I had been unwilling to stand up and call myself a son of Finwe? No, I do not think it would have been different if I had remained Finwe’s second daughter. My claim would have been no less, my convictions no different, and your father’s paranoia had a different root than my change. Do you think, niece, that it might have been different if you had not hidden your marriage from him for shame at the identity of your beloved?”

“It was not shame, uncle, but fear. As I should hope you know well, it is appalling that anyone could even think Fingon possible of bringing shame.” It was she, obviously, who was and who ought to be the source of any shame surrounding them, she who had acted shamefully time and time again. “My father was well into his madness by the time we wed. At first I hoped to turn him back to his former course, and then when it became clear no one could I feared what he would do. He threatened your life in the public square for reminding him you were related. What might he have done had he found us out?”

“And still you followed him.”

“As did you.” 

  
They stared into the fire in awkward silence while Ereinion slept, blissfully unaware of the strain between them. Fingolfin rose to go, and Maedhros was glad of it. She had had quite enough scratching at badly and barely healed wounds for the time being. But he paused at the door and turned. “He would be proud, I think, and happy, to see you so loved and so well matched, and to see what you have wrought together.” And with that he returned to Fingon, closing the door gently so as not to wake Ereinion.  _ But he will never see it now _ hung in the air between them.


End file.
